Friday Afternoon
by HourmanNathan
Summary: Just another quiet afternoon at Young Justice HQ... Bart and Cassie think about each other...


Disclaimer: I wish that I had come up with Bart, I really do; alas, he and all the other wonderful characters in here belong to DC. They're used without permission and no money has changed hands. As for the title... I couldn't think of anything else! If anyone can come up with a better title that makes sense please tell me...

NB: This story is set inbetween Bart's visit to the 30th century (in the "Dark Tomorrow" storyline) and "Our Worlds At War."

Friday Afternoon

"Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon-"

"Bart, what are you doing?"  
  
"Oh hey Cassie," said Bart turning around from the computer in front of him. He had a sheepish expression on his face.  
  
Cassie had flown in to change from flying. The hotel was usually deserted in the middle of the afternoon on a Friday. She had a free afternoon on a Friday from school, so she had decided to fly out and chill. She was going to see Cissie later that day, and had brought some clothes with her. She'd come into the hotel and heard something which sounded like someone was going beserk on a game of Quake or something. Whoever they were, they were sure typing quick.  
  
"Bart, what are you doing?" she asked again. He had been hunched over the screen intently when she had walked in and now he was sat so as to directly obscure what he had been doing.  
  
"Um, not much."  
  
"Where did the computer come from?" she asked; now that she took a closer look she could see that he wasn't using the monitor that was connected to the main Young Justice mainframe. The monitor was one of their spares. It looked like he had got a home computer from somewhere and jury-rigged it up to the main computer.  
  
"It's mine; I ran it over here from Manchester- I'm sure Robin won't mindandI'llgetittidyedbeforehecomesIswear-"  
  
"Bart, slower! What's it doing here?"  
  
There was the sheepish smile again. "I'm using the Internet." He span around quickly and double-clicked the mouse and span back to her. She had only just caught the movement.  
  
A screensaver came up, some sort of dancing Impulse. Bizarre. Almost hypnotic... Weird... The rhythm... She forced herself to look away from the screen. He'd probably downloaded that too... It was amazing what you could find on the Internet these days.  
  
"Couldn't you do it at your own house?"  
  
"Well..." Bart paused. Cassie was shocked to see him so still. "Um, it was taking too long, so I thought I'd come over and use the Young Justice modem because it's so much quicker. Only it's still taking forever."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I think that it's coz I've got an old computer and so it can't go as fast as the mainframe here."  
  
"Is it just downloading something or are you actually surfing for stuff?"  
  
"Oh, it's downloading files."  
  
"Well why don't you do something else in the mean time?"  
  
"Well, I don't want to leave in case something goes wrong-"  
  
"Bart I'm sure it won't. Go for a run, play some music, do anything; look, I'll be here for the next few hours 'cause Cissie's meeting me later and I want to get changed. I'll keep an eye on it every ten minutes or so for you, you know check that the connection doesn't drop off or anything. OK?"  
  
"Oh thanks Cassie you're the best!"  
  
Cassie just caught a blur of white and red as he went past. She smiled. Sometimes Bart was all mature, other times he was a little kid. She wasn't sure how much younger he was than her (wasn't there some question over his developmental age and stuff? She forgot) but he was. He was kind of sweet... Kon was a nice guy, but he could be a bit of a jerk at times.  
  
Half an hour later she was still thinking about how sweet he was.  


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Hello?" Robin called out. "Anyone there?" It was late afternoon and he had stopped off in the Super-Cycle just to check his e-mail. He also needed to chat with Oracle about requisitioning a transporter from the JLA supplies. With the upgrades that they had made to the Watchtower over the past few weeks they could certainly spare one. It would help so much with their transportation situation. It was all very well having Kon and Cassie flying, and Bart moving around the world in an eye-blink was good; still, a transporter could make all the difference.

Whose is this? thought Robin. Kon better not be trying to over-ride the security protocols for the girl's locker room again... He moved the mouse to take the Impulse screensaver off. Who had put that on? The rhythm was almost hypnotic... Weird. And whose was this stuff? Since when did they need a normal computer in the monitor room?  
  
Download complete! said the screen.  
  
Download? What had been downloaded? Oh my gosh! Why would anyone want those sort of files? Whose was this?  
  
He severed the netlink and climbed under the workstation to reconnect the main monitor up. He powered down the computer and left it to one side. He examined the monitor logs, see if he could figure out who had been there that afternoon. Bart had been in, that explained the computer... Cassie was still there in the rec room. He called her over the intercom.  
  
A few minutes later she flew in.  
  
"What's up?"  
  
"Is this Bart's?" he asked.  
  
"Oh, yeah. His modem wasn't fast enough at home so he brought his computer here to use our computer net-connection. That's OK isn't it?"  
  
"No, that's cool," Robin said, "Do you know what he was downloading?"  
  
"Erm, no I didn't ask. Why?"  
  
"Well, by taking it through the main workstation back-up files were created. Oracle installed it as part of the specs of the computer. Any information comes in through the comm-lines, the netlink included, gets backed up in a remote storage centre. Here, look what he's got on his hard-drive."  
  
Cassie looked at the main monitor. Her expression was first puzzled, then confused, then she burst out laughing.  
  
"He downloaded this?!"  
  
"Yup."  
  
"Why?!"  
  
"Well, that's what I'm going to ask him-"  
  
"No applause necessary!" shouted Kon as he flew in through the door. "What's that? Is that Bart dancing in a screensaver? Uh, I can't take my eyes off it, feels like-"

"Yeah, it's hypnotic-"

"Weird," said Kon.

"I didn't think that he'd put it through to the mainframe," said Robin, "I'll have to see to that later."

"Wait, what's that on the screen?" asked Kon, "Oh my gosh! Whose are those?!"

"They're Bart's, he downloaded them this afternoon off the 'net," said Cassie.  
  
"Bart's?" Kon stood stock still for a minute. Then...  
  
"Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha..."  
  
Robin sighed, "It isn't that funny Kon-"  
  
"Yes it is; oh but I disagree Boy Wonder. This is the funniest thing since Lobo took Anita on a date-"  
  
"That was pretty funny," chipped in Cassie, "But you never know, they might not be for Bart, he might just be downloading them for someone."  
  
"Yeah," said Robin, "He's pretty young to appreciate them."  
  
"Yeah, maybe," said Kon, "Let me know when he comes to collect his stuff so's I can come back and rib him a bit; I'm going to go and work out." He floated up and then turned back; "You wanna spar Boy Wonder?"  
  
"I wouldn't want to wear you out Kon."  
  
"Oh you think you can take the Teen of Steel? You serious?"  
  
The last thing that Cassie heard as Robin followed Kon out of the monitor room was Robin promising Kon that he was going down. Obviously Batman had trained Robin well in the art of wrestling insults...  
  
She shut down the monitor program that Robin had called up. She was pretty certain that the files weren't for Bart... She doubted so much that he would be into stuff like that. And...  
  
Why was it that just lately she was thinking of him like this? She liked Kon...didn't she?  
  
"Hey Cassie!"  
  
She was woken out of her reverie by the sight of a glowing Bart. It was one of his scout things that his new power produced.  
  
"Hey, uh, Bart."  
  
"Bart just sent me to get this and take it to his house now. Means that he can do two things at once."  
  
"Huh? What do you mean?"  
  
"Well, I've come from about four or five minutes in the future; Bart got halfway home and realised that he had left it here, so sent me back to take it to his house ahead of him. Pretty clever, eh?"  
  
"Yeah," laughed Cassie, "That is pretty smart. Can I ask you a quick question before you go?"   
  
"Sure," said the scout, "What?"  
  
"These files...um, they're not for Bart are they?"  
  
"What?!" said the scout, and he then had to put the hard-drive down before he dropped it from his super-fast fit of laughter; "No, of course they're not! They're for someone else. You don't think that Bart is interested in them do you?"  
  
"No, I didn't, it was Kon who was-"  
  
"Say no more," said the scout, "Look, I gotta go, just here to do the boss's work you know? See ya around Cassie!"  
  
And he was gone.  
  
She started to walk out to tell Kon that he had been wrong all along and that she had known that Bart wasn't like that-  
  
"Hey Cassie!" said Bart. This time he was of the non-glowing kind.  
  
"Oh hey, um, Bart." She was about to say, *Oh I just saw you,* but then she thought better of it. Stuff like that could wreck time and stuff. He had to go away and think that he had forgotten it.  
  
"Did you look after my stuff?"  
  
"Yeah, it was no trouble. I even disconnected the hard-drive afterwards and put our spare monitor away."  
  
"Aw, thanks, you're such a good friend." He lent forwards and patted her on the shoulder.  
  
Well, he patted her once, then for a half-second he wasn't there, then he was back and patted her again.  
  
"Here," he said, with his mask down so that she could see the yellow of his eyes. She loved that about his eyes, so different from everyone else... She looked down and in his hand was a bunch of flowers, all different colours, reds, blues, yellows, even orange and purple...every colour under the sun.  
  
He continued, "They're just to say thanks, and I know how much girls like flowers 'n' stuff so I went around the world and picked them for you."  
  
"Oh Bart! Thank you so much! They're really pretty!" She leaned forward and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. She could see him blushing slightly.  
  
"Um, that's OK," he said as he pulled his mask up and over his eyes again. "Anyway, um, gotta go, you know, um, homework and stuff. See ya!"  
  
And, as usual, there was a blur and he was gone.  
  
He really was sweet...  


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  


Bart had already ran around the world ten times that day with Wally, just something that they did every now and then. Not many of his friends could understand what it was like to be able to run so fast... Max could, but Max was...well he was Max and Bart didn't always want to talk about stuff with Max.  
  
He was...he was Max. He couldn't tell him that there was a girl that he liked. He'd just ask him if he was sure that he was over Carol. He didn't know if he was... He just knew that looking at Cassie made his stomach go funny lately. Plus she was really cool to hang with. It had taken him so long to figure out that he liked Carol, and he knew that he still loved her. But Cassie... She was here and now, and he knew that Carol would want him to go on and have a life where he wasn't just pining over her. He'd have to talk about it with Wally when we was next out for a jog. Wally would know what to do: he's the Flash.

Flash always knows what to do.  
  
His mind settled he altered course and changed direction so that he ran out in a hundred mile arc and headed back along the edge of the spray that he had just created an infinitessimal fraction of a second earlier, sprinting across the Pacific for North America and home. I wonder what Helen's made for supper? he thought.  
  
Oh shoot! The computer and the files! He'd left them back in the hotel. He didn't want to go back while Cassie was still there, not until he'd sorted out in his head how he felt about her. He'd send one of his scouts to fetch the stuff...  
  
Then he could show Helen the Osmond songs that he had downloaded on MP3. He'd even been able to get a few songs by Tom Jones too...  
  
THE END


End file.
